Clash of the Titans
by Anne Hedonia
Summary: Four geniuses who all think they're right. Put together in same room. Watch implosion.    Total crackfic. PS: The fandoms here are actually Doctor Who/House/The Mentalist/Sherlock, but I couldn't choose more than two.


**Fandoms:** Doctor Who/House/The Mentalist/Sherlock. It also doesn't hurt if you know some _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_.

**A/N: **I'll return to my usual smut soon, I just had this idea. Basically at some point I realized that all my favorite shows had the same main character: someone supernaturally brilliant and tortured who could analyze anybody in a second, have the complete scoop on them and see them coming from a mile away and hence never be taken off guard or bested. I wondered what this said about me. I also wondered what it would be like to stick them all in the same room.

Also, this is crackier than a Roman ruin.

* * *

><p>Chase and Foreman hovered in the doorway to House's office, managing to look both giddy and dazed.<p>

"We have the case," Chase said, with import.

House didn't even look up from the Mexican soap opera on his computer. "What case?"

"THE case," said Foreman.

"Of all TIME," added Chase, bouncing a little on his toes.

House sighed indulgently and looked up for a beat, then two. "Well?"

"You have to see him," averred Foreman. Chase nodded vigorously.

House reached for his cane, smirking in faux-warning: "If this is just a ruse to get me to my surprise birthday party..."

Foreman blinked. "It's not your birthday."

"I know. Wouldn't that make it a surprise?"

* * *

><p>Down the hall to the indicated room with his associates in tow. "So, symptoms?" asked House, breezing through the door.<p>

Foreman indicated an apparently unconscious, disheveled man on the bed who looked quite the worse for wear. "No pulse, no respiration, no vital signs whatsoever."

House glanced at the machines hooked to the patient, all totally flatlined. He regarded Foreman through narrowed eyes. "There's a shorter way to say that."

Suddenly the man coughed. "Who's there?"

"Aaaand yet he's talking," concluded Foreman with satisfaction.

One of House's eyebrows arched high. He took the man's pulse, frowned and leaned close to his face. "ARE YOU DEAD?" he asked loudly.

"There's no evidence he's hard of hearing," Foreman pointed out.

"I find that a common trait among THE DEAD."

"I'm not dead!" the man croaked.

"He says he's not dead," House reported needlessly.

Chase consulted the man's chart. "Well, he will be soon, he's very ill."

"I'm getting better!"

Chase shook his head. "No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment."

House rolled his eyes. "Look, there's obviously something wrong with the-"

"Hallo!"

The three all looked to see a tall, thin man with decidedly wayward hair clutching the edge of the glass door and leaning vertiginously into the room. He and his pinstriped suit were skinny, his long overcoat was not, and his red Chucks stole focus from all of it. His beaming grin was as friendly as only a clueless lunatic's could be. "Pleased to meet you, I'm the Doctor," he said Britishly.

House scowled. "I think you'll find _I'm _the doctor."

Chase indicated himself and Foreman. "We're chopped liver," he smiled.

The visitor and his flapping coat took over the room as he bounded into it uninvited. "Oh yes yes, of course! You're the little-d doctors, obviously. I'm the big-D Doctor, as that's my name..." He plucked the patient's chart out of Chase's hands. "Oh! What have we here? _Molto bene_! A little light reading. I love fiction..."

"What does that mean?" Foreman asked, rapidly becoming irritated.

"_Well_, these are all very good _guesses _as to what's going on with our friend here and they're very much in keeping with the medical knowledge you have in this time period-early 2010s, is it? Yes, thought so, could tell by the tie. That and the way you keep clutching your mobile phone as though it's a life support system. Although I'll tell you, in 2017 Apple invents this _brilliant _thing that—"

"POINT!" bellowed House. "As in COME TO ONE!"

"HIM! ALIEN!" The Doctor boomed in admirable imitation, indicating the patient. "Pointy enough for you?"

House's eyebrows leapt asymmetrically. His tone was a warning: "I'm assuming you mean he swam here from Cuba."

"Oh, no no NO! That'd be absurd!" laughed the Doctor. "Planet Cuba's in an entirely different galaxy from here. No, this man—well, this humanoid, silicon-based life form—has vital signs that can't be picked up by your equipment. His problem is he's used to a gelatin-based atmosphere—he's actually being slowly poisoned by breathing oxygen. I need to get him home to Beta Carotene as soon as possible."

Everyone's mouth hung open.

House was about to use his for a thoroughly exasperated retort but was pre-empted by a chipper knocking. This time they turned to see a dapper man in a three-piece suit lounging rakishly in the doorway. He sported cherubic golden curls, twinkling eyes, and a movie star smile. House hated him immediately.

"Hi there - Patrick Jane," he beamed. "I'm with the CBI."

"Clueless Buffoon Institute?" quipped House.

Mr. Jane smiled even more brightly and pointed a finger at House in a "Good one!" gesture. "Only sometimes. No, California Bureau of Investigation."

"California?" asked Chase. "Aren't you a bit out of your jurisdiction?"

"Meh," waved Jane. "Arbitrary boundaries."

"Legally enforced, structure of our country, arbitrary boundaries," reminded Foreman.

"Yes, government made, all the more reason to ignore them," Jane joined the group with an easy grace that nevertheless rankled them all. "I have a vested interest in making sure this man is in CBI custody as soon as possible."

"Why?" asked Foreman.

The humor abruptly dropped from Jane's eyes. "He's an associate—a minion if you will—of a serial killer named Red John."

"Pff," exclaimed the Big-D Doctor. All eyes turned to him. "I'm sorry, that's just ridiculous. The Beta Carotenians are the least violent race the universe has ever seen."

"You're right," House said dryly. "How ridiculous he's being."

"Red John sent him to murder a witness who'd seen too much," Jane continued ardently. "And now that he's outlived his usefulness Red John's killing him too."

"By what, remote control?" Chase asked.

Jane pointed at him. "Very nearly. He's implanted a hypnotic suggestion that's causing this man to subconsciously shut down his body." He gestured at the silent machines. "His vitals have already become too faint for your equipment to detect."

Foreman folded his arms. "I thought you couldn't hypnotize a person to do something against their will."

"You can't, but this man has devoted himself to Red John's service. He's very close to obeying, but his natural survival instincts are fighting back. That's why he's..." He gestured loosely at the patient, who groaned.

"So chatty for a dead guy?" supplied House.

"More or less." Jane stared at the man. "You have to let me put him back into a hypnotic state so I can undo the suggestion and find out Red John's identity, and I have to do it quickly before he loses the battle to live."

"See those machines?" House pointed. "No blinky beepy. Means you're too late."

"You don't really believe he's dead," Jane said, observing House shrewdly.

"I don't know what he is, because I haven't been able to do a differential with all you wingnuts parading through."

"Perhaps, but the possibility of _dead _isn't even on your options list, you're far too married to rationality and ruthless truth for that. Hypnotic suggestion doesn't score much better, and you're so used to having the last word that you'll never even consider the fact that I'm right."

House looked profoundly annoyed. "And you're an expert manipulator full of guilty self-loathing and a vendetta that makes you lose all rationality."

"I'm sorry, expert manipulator? Guilty self-loathing? Mr. Pot, there's a Mr. Kettle on line one."

"And what am I then, while we're at it?" asked the Doctor, casually curious.

"Completely batshit," said House.

"Wrong," declared the Doctor with sudden authority. "_Well_, might not be mutually exclusive, but I am the one who's going to show you what's really going on." He leapt into action, yanking a cord rudely from a monitor.

"Hey!" objected Foreman.

From his place slouched in a chair, Chase put a hand on Foreman's arm. "Give up the illusion that we have any control here."

The Doctor was jamming the monitor cord into one end of what looked like a gray plastic tube with a blue light at the other end. He aimed the tube at the patient's head and pushed a button on it that made it emit a whirring noise. The monitor sprang to life, showing clear, strange, impossible images. "How many humans do you know who have their livers in their heads?"

Everybody blinked at the screen, then startled at a disembodied, shouted command: "NO ONE MOVE!"

House groaned. "What fresh hell is this?"

A tall, curly-haired young man wearing muted colors and wrapped in a scarf swept imperiously into the room. "Do NOT TOUCH him even one more time. The evidence on him has undoubtedly already been egregiously compromised."

"Someone has a Word Of The Day calendar," muttered Jane.

The young man glared at him. "Sherlock Holmes," he introduced coldly. "I'm a consultant with Scotland Yard."

Foreman threw up his hands. "Has the idea of jurisdiction gone completely out the window?"

"Seems so," mused the Doctor. "I'm from outer space."

"Holmes?" questioned House. He indicated himself. "House. You seem familiar."

Holmes furrowed his eyebrows. "As do you."

The two stared at each other, then shrugged. "No matter," dismissed Holmes briskly, giving the not-really-a-corpse a cursory inspection. "At least there's some residual evidence on him—I assume it's told you everything you need to know?" Blank stares. Holmes looked utterly put out. "You can't be serious. The dust on his shoes? The kind only found on the floor of the basement halls of the Tower of London? He's clearly the one who recently stole the crown jewels, and in doing so murdered three guards and let four of the Queen's corgis escape?" No response. "How DO you people manage?"

"How do you account for the fact that he's dead?" challenged Foreman.

Holmes' glare could cut glass. "Could it be that he _died_?"

"I think I'll go for a walk!" croaked the patient.

"People, we're wasting time," Jane declared. "I have to get into this man's mind before he's completely gone!"

"No," said the Doctor, "I have to get him back to his own planet before he suffocates!"

House headed for the bedside phone. "I have to call security on all of you. There's a reasonable diagnosis for this, it's _mine _to find and none of you are going near him."

"I'm an expert in hypnosis and an impeccable observer of human behavior," objected Jane. "Nothing gets by me. I'm the one who knows what's going on here!"

"EXCUSE me?" blustered the Doctor. "Was no one paying attention? _Liver _in _face_?"

"I am the _unassailable_ authority here," said Holmes in disbelief. "I'm one of the smartest people in history. I'm so brilliant it's painful!"

"Get in line!" snapped House.

"I'M 900 years old and the last of a race of superior beings that once _ruled time_!" shouted the Doctor, strangely managing to do so through gritted teeth. "Plus I'm mercurial, unpredictable and endlessly quirky!"

"GET IN LINE!" yelled the other three men.

The discussion devolved from there.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, outside the glass walls, three people watched the fracas inside with undisguised fascination: a pretty black woman in a slim leather jacket and a perky updo, a mild-mannered-looking Englishman, and a tiny brunette woman with a badge on her hip.<p>

"For once in his life, Holmes isn't the cleverest person in the room," marveled John Watson, unrepentantly amused.

"Neither is the Doctor," said Martha Jones, shaking her head with a crooked grin.

Teresa Lisbon looked as tickled as a person could get. "I want popcorn!" she exclaimed.

The smell hit Teresa's nose before she glanced down to see a man's hand offering her a freshly popped microwave bag. She looked up to see the man's boyish face as he passed out the other two bags then began to munch from his own.

"James Wilson," he grinned. "And I'm way ahead of you."


End file.
